The house that John (Raynor) shares with his mother, Jean (Collette), is not only small -- the widescreen frame almost always has a doorway or wall that`s out of focus in the foreground, heightening the claustrophobia -- but also not particularly well looked after. In the wordless opening scenes, John has to water down the milk for his cereal because there`s not enough and needs to fish a dirty spoon out of the sink from underneath a pile of dirty dishes. Before anyone has even said anything, the economy of Barrett as a storyteller is abundantly clear.

When John finds his mother unresponsive in her bed after another drinking binge, he races her to the hospital in his rickety taxi. The doctors there aren`t particularly hopeful; she`ll need a liver transplant in the near future but they`re not even sure if she`ll make it that far. Jean`s first words, a good 15 minutes in and right after she`s come home from the hospital, are a frantically shouted "Where are theeeeey?" referring to the wine and spirits that John has thrown out. Clearly, this adult son has been mothering his sick mother for quite some time but her hospitalization and immediate return to the bottle finally make it clear in John`s head that something needs to change and it needs to happen now.

Compared to Shane or indeed almost anyone else, John might at first sight seem like something of a saint. Thankfully, nuanced writing and equally nuanced acting make sure that that`s not the case here. In fact, John`s patchy beard suggests he`s still not quite out of childhood and his occasional flare-ups show he`s only got a finite amount of patience. Besides, possibly the only way to get through to someone like Jean, an addict without the strength to break the destructive cycle she`s in, is to raise your voice and let them know that they`re not only destroying themselves but also their loved ones around them. John tells her that much in an impressively acted confrontation in his taxi, where he yells and cries that he lives with a stranger and she`s breaking his heart. An earlier, mid-film heart-to-heart between mother and son is another highlight, as Collette manages, in this single, dialog-heavy scene, to show us both how life has set her up for addiction and, almost simultaneously, the mother that makes John put up with all her terrible behavior for the rest of the film. Several close-ups of Raynor`s face as he beams with love or is fraught with worry for Kit, Shane or Jean tell the rest of the story and confirm the actor`s impressive talent for conveying emotions without necessarily using words.

A subplot involving the transportation of Asian women in his taxi to dubious locations is a tad too enigmatically told and edited to really make clear what`s happening and since it plays into the finale, there's no real sense of closure or catharsis but just a lot of confusion. However, the rest of the film`s assembly is impressively controlled for such a small project (both Poulter and Collette only had four days of shooting). Technical contributions are all quite humble but seen the small and rather poor world in which the characters live, this is entirely appropriate.